Twenty Square Miles

I decided on it tonight. Twenty square miles is the difference between rent and taxation. In a video of mine I propose a factor test, and yes I do think that the upward limit on the amount of land that can be possessed without disparities of power being steep enough to call coercion cannot be accurately described without very nuanced language and can only be approached in a very nuanced way. But I also believe that legal definitions must be obvious to laypeople, comprehensible by laypeople, and easily predictable. Landlords and DROs/PDAs aren't going to have much direction in how much contiguous land they may claim jurisdiction over when the question of whether they have a legitimate claim to such'n'such plot of real estate is a question that can only be settled in court or arbitration. The near-endless list of factors can be made a lot shorter if everyone agrees that contiguous jurisdictions have to be 20 square miles or less.

Why arbitrarily pick 20 square miles, you ask? Well, the land area of Santa Clara is 18.4 square miles, the land area of Malibu is 19.87 square miles, and both towns are small enough for only one aspect of the typical suburbanite's day to be contained in it - you either drive in for work and then drive back home, or you live there and spend only your evenings there. If you want to move, you can easily move to a neighboring town without drastically affecting your life. San Jose, on the other hand, is so big that all parts of a person's day can be contained in it, and moving to a neighboring town may be more difficult. I know, it sounds totally arbitrary. But it's a lot easier to say "20 square miles" than to go down an ever-expanding list of factors that contribute to the difficulty of moving to a different jurisdiction.

The 20 sq. mi. limit assumes, of course, that people have the means to get around quickly - that there are free or cheap roads and every adult has a car or a bicycle, or that there's public transport accross the whole city. Without the infrastructure for this level of mobility, the upward limit should probably be much lower.

And the 20 sq. mi. limit does not address entrapment, which can still occur when jurisdictions adhere to the 20 sq. mi. limit.

Musings on Another Reason.TV vid

The president of the libertarian club at my campus was interviewed by Reason.TV, and a few revealing points were raised.



For one thing, Michelle points out that young Republicans tend to be more receptive to libertarianism than Democrats. Part of this might be that we're at a Christian campus, but I don't think the Christian orientation of our campus has everything to do with it. From what I've seen in undergrad at a public school, libertarianism appealed mostly to conservative young people. Part of it might have been Ron Paul. And that definitely had a role in it, since I never called myself a libertarian until after I was already a Ron Paul fan. And I was drawn to sites like LRC and Antiwar.com through my involvement in the Ron Paul campaign.

Besides Ron Paul, I think the very nature of mainstream libertarianism today is set up to attract conservatives. Mainstream libertarian views on economics are - how shall I put it - unoffensive. There might be another side to this coin. Self-styled progressives militantly reject the idea that voluntary economic interaction produces economic stability and equity. Libertarianism as a movement has failed to attract American leftists because it has failed to tie economic freedom with opportunity and sustainability. There are so many catch-phrases on the left that libertarians seem oblivious too. There's environmental racism. There's food justice. There's water waste. Libertarianism misses these low-hanging fruits. All these things can be addressed with libertarian ideas, and mainstream libertarians express more outrage about San Francisco banning happy meals than they do about the Federal government subsidizing corn and meat.

Michelle was asked about social aesthetics among young libertarians, and she basically answered that we're all a bunch of nerds who spend more time reading online articles than watching tv - which is probably true. Michelle's interviewer pointed out that libertarians of his generation were punks when they were younger. Michelle didn't mention any particular subculture that most libertarians today are coming from or are drawn to, and I think that's true - we're not punks, we're not into hip hop, we're not much of anything. This might be good in a way. We can't be put into a box the way anarchist socialists can be put into the crust punk box. But there might be downsides to this too. We don't have any rousing songs. And if you think Aimee Allen's song was the kind of thing that can get people to raise clenched fists, just look at this leftist song by the Dropcick Murphys.



Let's be honest. Rousing songs, revolutionary imagery, and other kinds of symbolism get young people who want radical change to read your stuff and take you seriously. Mainstream libertarians' sense of aesthetic is Statue of Liberty stickers on sportcoat lapels. It should be no surprise that the kind of people we attract are the type who read Hayek for leisure.

Three Short Comments on an Interesting Video from ReasonTV

Chris Reed raises some interesting points here, and I think these points definitely need to be shared with progressives in CA. However, I have 3 things I need to add.



1. Charter schools have a reputation of having a high turnover rate of teachers. It may be an inaccurate reputation, but it's the reputation, and it must be addressed by anyone who wishes to present charter schools as a force for the benefit of the underclass.

2. Walmart, too, is not known for job security. Maybe this too is an inaccurate reputation, but that's its reputation, and libertarians, neoliberals, and conservatives who want to defend Walmart as a progressive force for the betterment of underserved communities must address this reputation.

3. No criticism of California's water policy would be complete without a detailed picture of how government subsidies for water and water infrastructure contribute to water waste and the betterment of large corporate water users to the detriment of smaller water users. Sadly, almost every libertarian critique I've seen of California's water policies has been a defense of consumption without regard to cost. Market-oriented voices for social justice and environemntal sustainability should propose to reform the system so that water is distributed in a way that regards its preciousness, rather than simply demand more water welfare or gripe about environmental protection.

Something About Women's Business Dress That Pisses Me Off

I'm not the kind of guy to complain about women trying to conform to men's expectations. Whether the aesthetic that women in the business world are expected to conform to is asserted onto them by men or by other women is flat out irrelevant - what's relevant is that high heels are fucking stupid. And I have a feeling that women are just as guilty as men are in subjecting young women to that foot-binding instrument.

I've believed for actually a few years that high heels are vain, but my stay at my current school has really driven me up the wall about high heels. There was a moot court competition here a couple weeks ago, and I stood there and watched a moot court team from another school walk towards our law school, and the clup-clup-clup of all the girls' heels drowned out the car engines on the nearby street.

I recently had the privilege of acting out the defendant for my apartment mate's moot court class, and now I hate high heels even more. The student pretending to be the prosecuting attorney was wearing high heels, and when she was setting up for her closing arguments she wiggled accross the courtroom to get a marker. It wasn't walking, it was wiggling. The altitude of her heels actually impeded her locomotion. Her cocounsel was wearing heels too, but fortunately she didn't have to wiggle accross the courtroom to grab a marker.

I don't know what there is about high heels that makes girls think they have to wear them if they want to look formal. High heels don't look formal. They look ridiculous. What we think right now of the court fashion of baroque men is exactly what we will think of high heels when female vanity is finally directed in more wholesome pursuits. Young women can look just as classy and just as pretty when they wear 1-inch heels, or - God forbid! - flats. Women wiggle less when their heels are closer to the ground, and I dare say less wiggling is more courtroom-appropriate than more wiggling.

There is no benefit to wearing something that strains your ankles and blisters your toes. I don't know of any men's clothing item that hurts to wear. If there were one, I don't think men would feel that obliged to wear it. And I say it's about time women no longer felt obliged to wear high heels.

Why do we say "Welfare-Warfare State"?

Why not "Warfare-Welfare State"? After all, shouldn't the worst evil go first? And isn't murder more evil than theft?

Cyrenaics

I recently changed my "religious views" on my facebook profile from "Esaianism" to "Esaianism (which is, Philosophical Taoism, Cyrenaicism, Epicureanism, Jainism, stirred well)". Epicureanism is doing moderately well as a quasi-religion, and by moderately well I mean that I have met 2 university professors who identify as Epicurean, one of whom was introduced in my class as an Epicurean, and the other, who did the introduction, and who was my Hellenistic philosophy professor, who lists his "religious views" on his facebook profile as Epicureanism. There are also a couple facebook groups dedicated to Epicureanism. I have found only one facebook page dedicated to Cyrenaics, and this was a "Community Page" devoted specifically to Aristippus. All 3 paragraphs of it were lifted straight from Wikipedia. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but it might be nice for more light to be shed on this stripe of hedonism.

The Cyrenaics start from the Greek ethical commonplace that the highest good is what we all seek for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything else. This they identify as pleasure, because we instinctively seek pleasure for its own sake, and when we achieve pleasure, we want nothing more. Similarly, pain is bad because we shun it.

In this sense, they are like the other classical school of hedonism, Epicureanism. The two schools differ, however, on how exactly to define "pleasure".

Pleasure and pain are both ‘movements,’ according to the Cyrenaics: pleasure a smooth motion, and pain a rough motion. The absence of either type of motion is an intermediate state which is neither pleasurable nor painful. This is directed against Epicurus’ theory that the homeostatic state of being free of pain, need and worry is itself most pleasant. The Cyrenaics make fun of the Epicurean theory by saying that this state of being free of desires and pain is the condition of a corpse.

Or, as the omniscient Wikipedia puts it:

The Cyrenaics taught that the only intrinsic good is pleasure, which meant not just the absence of pain, but positively enjoyable sensations.

If their reputation is accurate, which it probably isn't, then the Cyrenaics were total nutters. They do, however, contribute something very valuable - the recognition of pleasure as really something, and not just the absence of pain and anxiety.

Two Videos for Armistice Day

Posted My First "Question" on Facebook Tonight

What percentage of the CA GDP might consumer expenditures on water be,
if CA water were distributed at a market price instead of heavily
subsidized?

For the past couple days I've been plagued with daydreams of a socialist minarchy (if there's such a thing; I know "libertarian socialism" almost always refers to some faction of far-left anarchism) where instead of taxes there are water "fees" that fund modest stipends that are guaranteed to every resident from conception to the grave. The stipends would have to be big enough to cover rent and food. The state would have to have a monopoly on both water and currency, which makes it not at all libertarian by my standards. The total amount of money in circulation would have to be greater (probably much greater) than the value and amount of water being used at that time, because the amount of money coming in through water use would have to be roughly equal to the amount issued through the stipends (if the former is less than the latter then there would be inflation), and there needs to be enough currency floating around for people to save or spend on little vanities like internet access or art supplies or weed.

If you know this kind of socialism would be doomed from the start - doomed like Khmer Rouge doomed, tell me now. You probably won't deter me from continuing to think about it, but yeah.

And since I couldn't find anything on something like this, I had to make up my own name for it - stipendism. Glamourous, huh?

Props to the Georgists, to Proudhon and Bakunin et al, to erudite progresive neoliberals and to Swedish-style social democrats, to the Property and Environmental Law professor who I've talked to twice, and to numerous others...

Don't worry, I'm not going statist all of a sudden. I've just been thinking about what kind of state socialism I would find most amenable, and I had to start making one up. I would be impressed with myself if this turns out to be theoretically viable.

So I'm going to be asking more questions of Facebook, if I get some helpful info as answers to the above question. Anyone know someone who's good at constructing economic models and has a lot of free time?

A Possibly More Realistic Interpretation

The right honorable Thomas DiLorenzo tells about his trip to Poland, where he was picked up by a young man who displayed on his dashboard a Confederate flag magnet which he bought while visiting Richmond.

Politically-Correct Interpretation: Obviously, this young libertarian, whose parents were slaves of socialism, is a racist who reveres nineteenth-century American slave owners and would probably like to introduce slavery to Poland.

More Realistic Interpretation: This young Polish libertarian, who has not been brainwashed by American government schools, and who has never attended a Claremont Institute seminar, naturally thought of the Confederate flag as a symbol of opposition to a hated centralized governmental tyranny.

Or how about this possibly more realistic interpretation: This young Polish libertarian is fascinated with not-exactly-libertarian idiosyncracies of other cultures' histories, just as I as a young American libertarian am fascinated by Soviet-era classical music and entertain an arm-chair interest in socialist realist art, and this young libertarian Pole wishes to collect trinkets and other paraphernalia that reminds him of these unlibertarian idiosyncracies, partly because they tickle his brain and partly because they make him feel rebellious.

Of course, it was Tom DiLorenzo who rode with him from the airport to the hotel or the conference, and so DiLorenzo knows more about the guy than I do. Maybe the Pole really was a Confederate sympathizer. Or maybe he was just being chatty.

Death

I just today stumbled upon this beautiful piece by Stravinsky.



The lyrics of the first movement are from Psalms 39: 13 and 14. At Wikipedia they're translated as:

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with Thine ears consider my calling: hold not Thy peace at my tears.
For I am a stranger with Thee: and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.
O spare me a little that I may recover my strength: before I go hence and be no more.

This translation grabbed my attention, because like several other passages of the Old Testament, this passage seems to present an image of death as the complete end of the individual's existence - which is very different from the contemporary view of death being just a temporarily painful transition to a better world.

My mind then wandered on to contemporary compassionate views of God. According to moderate and liberal theists, God couldn't have commanded genocide, punished whole nations with disease, disasters, or conquest, or set up all humanity to fail - He's too good for that. I think this view cuts away at least 50% of what the idea of God is supposed to be.

Religion is a reaction to death and suffering. That's why so many people turn to it - it helps them deal with suffering, and especially to make their peace with death. The Old Testament idea of God was a very useful innovation. "God", as something that's bigger than you, that holds the puppet strings to the conditions of your existence, and against which you as a mere human are totally powerless, instills a comforting dose of resignedness. Old-fashioned monotheism was an open and frank acceptance of those evils that we cannot control.

Monotheism began loosing its edge more and more, especially in recent amplifications of God's attributes of Mercy and Love, to the detriment of other traditional attributes. This blunting process accelerated 2 centuries ago, but I think it got underway more than 2 millenia ago, when monotheism started making explicit assertions of belief in an afterlife.

Belief in an afterlife is problematic for two reasons. For one, life after death is probably untrue. The idea of an immortal soul goes against the contemporary understanding of the interrelation between the soul, or psyche, and the physical body. You may as well believe that wiping yourself with fiberglass insulation won't irritate your skin. Heck, you may as well believe in pink winged unicorns. Placing your hopes on something that no one can venture even an educated guess about, and which all the evidence we have actually weighs against, is something the Epicureans call a "vain and empty" desire.

The other reason belief in the afterlife is problematic, is that it's inadequate for religious purposes. Your religious beliefs are supposed to help you make peace with death. Unfortunately, most people view death as a nap, or as a trip to another world. If you accept death as a benign transition to another world, then you haven't made your peace with death. You've made your peace with a coma, but you haven't made your peace with death.

Belief in the afterlife whitewashes what is most inherently evil about the world - the permanent end of one's existence as an experiencing being. Yes, death is evil. It is the elimination of all capacity to enjoy - it is the erasure of everything good. And yes, it is natural. This awareness of death being both essential to our world and evil is necessary for a full acceptance of death, and of this world in general.

Granted, some people just like to play religious make believe. It's as if the only thing that can help them make peace with someone's "homegoing" is to make things up about their loved one playing a gold harp in the sky and watching out for them. The Baptist version is a little different. In that version Heaven is a non-stop church service in a cube. Everyone stands around the throne and sings praises to Jesus without end while throwing their hard-earned crowns at his feet. If that's really what's needed to give them peace about it, then so be it, I guess.